The present invention relates to a tomographic apparatus suitable for nondestructively inspecting industrial manufactures or the materials thereof, and particularly to a CT apparatus provided with independent movable radiation generating/sensing systems.
CT apparatuses are conventionally used for material purposes to obtain a tomographic image (CT image) of a human body, or for industrial purposes to nondestructively test various objects. Such a CT apparatus is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,075,492 (Boyd et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,138,721 (Boyd), U.S. Pat. No. 4,149,247 (Pavkovich et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,178 (Nassi et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,293,912 (Walters), etc. (All disclosures of these U.S. Patents are incorporated by reference in the present application.)
In general, a scanner main body of the above CT apparatus is settled or fixed in a specific scanner room. In this case, the object to be inspected must be carried into the scanner room. This restricts the kind, size and/or weight of the object that can be inspected. In addition, according to a known algorithm for reconstructing a CT image, an X ray generator/sensor pair of the CT apparatus has to be rotated around the object to be inspected by an angle of at least the sum of 180 degrees and the X ray fan beam angle. Therefore, even if the object (e.g., a construction body) to be inspected can be carried into the scanner room, it is often impossible to obtain a complete reconstructed CT image of the object, because the rotation of the generator/sensor pair over 180 degrees is impossible.